


a park with a view (is a park with you in it)

by flavus



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (it's james), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Asexual Character, James is an artist/psychiatrist, M/M, NYC, Parks are fun, Thomas is a lawyer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9818795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flavus/pseuds/flavus
Summary: furtive glances across a field get you nowhere. (usually)or the one where they're reincarnated, and jefferson approaches madison with an invite





	

Ames knew it was a little creepy to consistently stare at a person. Okay, maybe a lot creepy.  
  
But that businessman, who strolled around the park during his lunch breaks, was incredibly captivating - and that jawline looked like it was sculpted by Michelangelo.  
  
“Fuck,” Ames muttered under his breath. “How can a person be so beautiful?”  
  
“Hi, can I buy a caricature? Just the standard,” said someone standing next to him, and Ames was forced to snap back to reality.  
  
“Of course. Just sit there,” he gestured to the empty stool across from him, and began sketching.  
  
Every lunch break, he went to the nearby park to make caricatures of people. It was a side job that brought in extra income - not that he needed it, especially since his actual profession as a psychiatrist brought in decent pay. Anyway, he didn’t do it for the money. As far back as he could remember, he’d doodled on everything and anything.  
  
He remembered his Algebra teacher asking, “Ames, what’s the square root of eight simplified?” only to pause next to his desk and explode in a fury at seeing a drawing of Ames’s pencil case instead of that day’s notes.  
  
Ames couldn’t pinpoint why he loved drawing so much. Maybe because it allowed him to attain a kind of intimacy he was unaccustomed to receiving from - or searching for - from people, and allowed him to feel some semblance of normal. Or maybe because he didn’t like talking - he preferred the thought that went into drawing, and he always thought pictures said more than words.  
  
“Sit still,” he reminded the girl, who was beginning to get fidgety. She probably thought she would be late for something, and he felt a little bad for holding her up - although she was the one who requested a caricature, anyway.  
  
He squinted as he exaggerated her jawline, splashed a group of freckles haphazardly across her face, and widened her eyes to create a look of doe-eyed impatience. After casting a cursory glance at the caricature, he handed it to the girl.  
  
“That’ll be eight dollars, miss,” he said - a bit stiffly, he noted with a twinge of discomfort.  
  
“Thanks! It looks great,” she said, shoving a pile of bills into his hand and briskly walking off toward one of the buildings in the distance.  
  
Ames sighed and stretched, checking his watch. “Thirty more minutes,” he noted, then pushed the next page of his sketchbook back to work on a project he’d been working on for the past week.  
  
“Needs more definition here,” Ames rubbed the jawline of the man in the picture - none other than mystery businessman - and smudged the pencil to fix the shading. He moved next to the man’s nose - long, sloping, elegant - and felt himself lean closer to the paper, as if the simple act of drawing the person brought them closer. He had to resist the urge to brush his lips against the paper as he finished the man’s thin lips. Running his pencil around their curves, caressing those lips with light strokes of his pencil awakened a heat in him he didn’t know he possessed.  
  
Across from the park, the man being drawn, Matt, smirked. He’d seen the artist’s furtive glances at him for months, and he couldn’t help but relish the attention. At the same time, though, there was something about the man that beckoned him closer, and okay, it wasn’t because the man was absolutely delectable - or maybe it was.  
  
Either way, Matt decided it was high time he satisfied his long-time urge to have himself caricatured. Or his longer-time urge to finally talk to the man he’d been glancing at - whenever the man wasn’t looking at him - for real.  
  
Meanwhile, dismayed, Ames stopped drawing. “I can’t draw his eyes because I haven’t seen them close enough,” he groaned, and looked up to meet the very eyes he was contemplating.  
  
“O-oh,” he stuttered. Eloquent, Ames, he thought sardonically, feeling the man’s eyes run over him.  
  
“I’d like to sit for a caricature,” Matt drawled.  
  
“I have to go back to work in ten minutes,” Ames said with an outward calm that didn’t reflect his inward turmoil - the truth was, he’d rather have drawn the man than caricatured him. He was worth more than an exaggeration, though he acted like one - whatever his name was, the man was easily ruffled and prone to theatrics, which Ames had observed over the course of the past months, when he’d seen the man gesticulating wildly while on the phone with someone, or yelling at an innocent passer-by whose dog had accidentally knocked over his soda.  
  
So he wasn’t expecting the man to stand up, just as quietly as he’d approached, and say cheerily over his shoulder as he walked away, “Guess I’ll just have to come back tomorrow!”  
  
“Huh?” he managed to grunt out, but it was long after Matt had disappeared into the crowds aiming to get back to their office. At least Ames had a good idea of the man’s eyes now: a deep brown the color of molten chocolate, slightly almond shaped but burning with an intensity and passion.  
  
In between faux-coughs, he sputtered out, “I’m going to be out for the rest of the day,” on a phone call to his secretary. Though he felt vaguely guilty, he knew the vision he had of the man’s eyes would be ephemeral and he needed to draw them before he forgot what they looked like.  
  
“Because,” he reasoned, “What are the chances that he’d come back before the end of the-”  
  
Matt hadn’t intended on coming back to the artist until the day after, but he realized he had a big board meeting that would probably cause him to take a late lunch the next day, and fuck it, he wasn’t going to wait a day longer to talk to the man.  
  
He placed his hand gently on the man’s back, and announced his presence with a booming “Hello again!” not meaning to startle him. Then Matt had an impulse to jerk his hand away from the artist, and his eyes closed.  
  
_“Our new institution at the university has had a success which gained it a universal applause.” Hoping against hope that the patriots would come to defeat the Tories, writing for advice on matters that would arise if the nation came to fruition - “_ _I never consulted you whether the paiment of our Western expenditures, annexed as a condition to our passing the articles recommended, would not be acceded to by Congress.” The one person whose counsel he trusted above any other, even - at times, above his wife’s. His desire to have him by his side, always - “I hope you will be there too when you can no longer be in any more important place.” His acknowledgment of the man’s intelligence, of inestimable worth during the turmoil known as Alexander Hamilton and the John Adams administration. His pride at the man’s successful presidency, after he had stepped down - “I sincerely congratulate you on your release from incessant labors, corroding anxieties, active enemies & interested friends, & on your return to your books & farm, to tranquility & independance.”_  
  
“James Madison,” Matt said, wondering, recognition setting in.  
  
Unhearing, Ames contemplated burying his face in his hands at remembering the man was seeing the drawing of himself Ames had been working on, until his eyes suddenly snapped shut.  
  
_“My own opinion has always been in favor of a bill of rights.” Writing by candlelight, racked with worry for the new nation - “It is to be observed that the situation of Congress has undergone a total change from what it originally was.” The only person he felt he could express his true opinions to, the letters he wrote that spilled out details of his personal life: his political and romantic frustrations, his attempts to convince himself that his wife, someone he thought he loved, was also someone he found erotic. The first administration, Washington taking the reins of the new country, every breath held for the first four years as the political experiment played out. “I shall always receive your commands with pleasure.”_ _“We need to save his portrait,” a woman - his wife - grasping at his hand as the air around them became dark with smoke, “We need to save his legacy.” He grabbed the letters next to the candlestick, bound tightly with letter and addressed from one person -_ __  
__  
“Thomas Jefferson,” he whispered.  
  
Ames understood, in that moment, why he hadn’t yet felt romantic feelings for anyone - because his heart and soul were already pledged to someone from a previous life.  
  
His pencil fell to the ground as he uncharacteristically pulled the man - “Thomas,” his subconscious noted - closer, and he let out a gasp as Thomas - “It’s Matt, in this life,” he murmured - put a hand on his face and pushed their lips together tenderly.  
  
The real man was much better than the drawing, he thought in the back of his head. Much better.  
  
“You make me look beautiful,” Matt whispered, pulling away from the kiss to look at Ames’s artwork.  
  
“You are beautiful,” Ames rolled his eyes, but felt a smile come to his lips anyway. “Excruciatingly so.”  
  
Matt knew he looked a mess - his favorite Dolce  & Gabbana suit, with magenta pinstripes, was ruffled, and he could feel his curls tangling at the back of his head, but he couldn’t care less.  
  
“So we’re founding fathers,” Ames stated coolly.  
  
Matt smirked. “Does that mean I can call you daddy?”  
  
Before he could stop himself, Ames let a guffaw break loose. He hadn’t remembered the last time he laughed like that, and it felt good. Being with Matt - Thomas - felt good, natural, like it was always supposed to be just the two of them against the world.  
  
“As long as you take me home.”

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a tumblr prompt -  
> "reincarnation au, and when soulmates touch, they remember their past lives."
> 
> (title inspired by a lyric from the ITH song 96,000)
> 
> i hope you enjoyed! i've never written a true jeffmads before, so i hope this does them justice.
> 
> the quotes i used when each remembers their past lives can be found on this website. :~) 
> 
> [kudos & comments are much appreciated! come yell at me on tumblr [@talkmarcellus](%E2%80%9Dtalkmarcellus.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D)]


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